How to Stop Creative Sabotage and Achieve Artistic Success
There have been various times in my life when I sabotaged my best creative intentions.
I procrastinated and failed to complete creative projects. I missed important deadlines. I focused on negative experiences rather than on positive ones. And I generally failed to do what I desired to do in order to gain the rewards of my efforts.
If this sounds like you, then you’re probably sabotaging your creativity and your creative pursuits.
And if so, then you’re also probably frustrated and dissatisfied with your creative work and with yourself as an artist. More significantly, you may be deeply unhappy and even believe that you’re incapable of being creative in effective and skilled ways.
So, how do you stop being a saboteur of your creative work, start succeeding in your artistic pursuits, and find the happiness and satisfaction inherent to creativity?
What is Creative Sabotage?
Creative self-sabotage is not the result of a lack of skills, knowledge, desire or even effort.
Rather, it’s the result of how we think about ourselves as artists and how we view our creativity and our creative work.
Self-sabotage feeds off of bad creative habits, such as perfectionism, a reluctance to take risks, negative thinking, and self-deprecation. Also, it stems from a range of uncomfortable feelings such as fear, sadness, and anger. And it tends to highlight low self-esteem and our insecurities as artists.
Despite the tenacity of these problems, I’ve found that there are ways to shift sabotage to success, and it’s a lot easier than you might think.
How to Stop Sabotage
Here are some ways I shifted my thinking and habits in order to stop sabotaging my efforts and to succeed creatively:
Claim your creativity
Not claiming your creativity and your identity as a creative person is one way you sabotage your efforts as it’s difficult to take yourself seriously enough to place the time and energy into creative success. If you create art and love doing it, then taking up the mantle of “artist” is as simple as saying: “I’m an artist.” And you can further internalize this identity by telling those closest to you. By sharing our creative identities with others, then we empower ourselves to claim our creativity and do what we need to do in order to succeed.
Let your core desires guide you
Focusing on what we feel we “should” do, rather than on what we love creatively and what we feel passionately about is another way we sabotage our creative pursuits. Try not to focus on what you believe will sell or be well-received. Avoid what you think is the “hot” trend or what publishers or editors want. Focus on your own creative desires and let those guide you towards creative success.
Create realistic expectations
While setting goals can be helpful, striving towards unrealistic ones is a sure way to sabotage your creative efforts. Instead of goal-setting, try focusing on creative intentions. Set an intention and work diligently towards it. If you work better with goals, make them SMART and doable and work towards achieving them incrementally. By taking small, realistic steps, then you’re more likely to get things done and succeed creatively.
Develop your inner coach
Every artist possesses an inner critical voice, which drives us and give us direction and guidance. However, when that voice is negative and even downright mean, then we’re unlikely to feel motivated. Listening to this voice of the inner critic is another way we sabotage our creative efforts. But by developing a positive, nurturing inner voice, what some call an “inner coach,” you’re more likely to feel motivated and much more likely seek creative success.
Focus on past and current success
Worrying about future success or past failures, rather than focusing on our success is another way we sabotage our creative efforts. How have you succeeded in the past? What successes have you enjoyed? What are you doing now that works? By focusing on our successes rather than our failures or our worries about future failure, then we’re much more likely to get things done and to feel successful when we do so.
Seek support
Finally, creating art can be a very lonely experience. Staying isolated in our craft is a sure way to become mired in our problems and worries. Rather than isolate, try to reach out to others who may be able to offer support. In some cases, this may be as simple as sharing your work with your friends and family. Or you may want to seek out an artistic community either online or offline which nurtures you and your art. There are so many different ways to share your work and to reach out to others for the support that you seek. By doing so, you create a context in which you can feel supported, understood, and not so alone, which translates into creative success.
There’s No “Correct” Way to Succeed
Creative success comes to us in many different forms. Also, there’s no “correct” way to succeed creatively. So try not to worry about doing things the “right” way and trust your own artistic impulses and intuition.
If you’re sabotaging yourself, you’re not lazy or incapable.
Rather, more likely, you’re actually hard-working and highly capable. However, artists with this temperament tend to be really hard on themselves.
So, try easing up some and see if you start succeeding artistically rather than sabotaging your best creative efforts.
Do you sabotage yourself? What methods do you use for creative success?
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then feel free to share it.
Flickr photo by lanuiop
Want more poetryNprogress? Subscribe to the mailing list to receive the latest news and updates.
Share
6 Responses to “How to Stop Creative Sabotage and Achieve Artistic Success”
Comments
Read below or add a comment...
For years I was guilty of perfectionism. I set impossibly-high goals which I was guaranteed not to reach and so I was always dissatisfied with my work; even when it was good it was never good enough. The thing about perfection is that there are two kinds, absolute and relative. A hammer is a perfect tool for getting nails into wood. A sledgehammer isn’t much good for breaking up a cake of toffee however. What you need to ask is: Does my poem (or whatever) do what I intended it to do? If it does then you’ve done all you can do. Does it matter if you write “Wait a second,” or “Hang on a minute” or “I’ll just be a moment” since none of them are accurate anyway? How long is a ‘moment’ anyway? It’s Shylock and his ‘pound of flesh’ all over again.
Getting published did a lot to assuage my fears but it was taking note of the responses of certain individuals to particular pieces of writing that made me appreciate that I was only ever going to be partly responsible for the failure or success of any piece of writing: readers bring their own baggage and what every one of us is looking for is the ‘perfect’ reader, the one whose life-experiences dovetail with what we’re trying to say. I’ve seen a grown man cry after reading one of my poems, another woman wanted to pin up my story ‘Over’ in her loo so that her friends could all read it at their convenience; another guy pinned one of my poems on the notice board beside his desk because he said it expressed perfectly how he felt about writing. Now you don’t get many of those experiences to the pound but hang onto those that you do because it’s things like that that keep me writing.
Jim Murdoch´s last [type] ..Aggie and Shuggie 31
[Reply]
Ami Mattison Reply:
March 21st, 2011 at 7:59 am
Your experience is illuminating, Jim! Your analogy of the hammer is not only funny but useful. I too struggled with perfectionism early in my creative career. Ultimately, I think it’s about finding balance–challenging ourselves in appropriate ways and letting our best efforts be “good enough.”
I think it’s absolutely crucial to do as you’ve done–hang on to our successes, especially those in which others find value and meaning in our work. Sometimes, I get down on my creative career, baiting myself with the question “What the use?” Yet, this is precisely the moment when it’s important to focus on success. So, I usually focus on all the people who have told me that my work has changed their lives, their hearts, and their minds. Embracing those successes is usually enough to shift my question to “Why not?” And I’m happily writing again and moving forward in my career.
Thanks for sharing, Jim!
[Reply]
I really like this post. I particularly like that you’re giving me permission to let my core desires guide me. For a long time I felt I should write poetry. Everyone told me I should. It was “real” writing. But you know what? I just don’t want to right now. I want to create a home and write a blog and develop things at work that help others be more effective teachers. All creative pursuits–just not the ones that I (and others) felt I should pursue. Ironically, I think sometimes we have to be willing to put down the mantle of “artist.” This struggle started for me back in junior high when I placed in a major writing competition. I was thereafter known as “Rita, the good writer.” There are things about writing poetry I love. I still see myself as a poet. But I think there are other things I need to do before I can find my way back to it. Hmmm…giving me an idea for a blog post of my own. But I’ve got work to do on this house…Too many things I want to do (oh, there’s another blog post idea popping up…) Thanks as always for all the food for creative thought and action.
Rita´s last [type] ..Striking back- Gratitude 31011
[Reply]
Ami Mattison Reply:
March 21st, 2011 at 8:07 am
Ha, Rita! Seems that creative mind of yours just can’t stop!
Your experience is really instrumental to me and it’s precisely what I’m trying to express here–focusing our creativity in the areas we feel passionately about and love the most. It makes me happy that you’ve stress here how creating a home (and family), writing a blog, and focusing on creative ways to best help others are creative pursuits. Efforts such as these represent how we can take our creativity and apply it in fundamental and concrete ways to our lives–which is what this blog is actually all about.
You go with all your blog ideas! Can’t wait to read them!
[Reply]
I subconsciously self-sabotage by getting sick when I have an important deadline. Over the last few years I have learned to face this head on and sometimes my sickness even retreats in the face of my determination to make the deadline. If not, I muster every last scrap of remaining strength to meet my targets. I hope eventually my body will get the message and not do this any more
Great post, thanks, Ami. I agree with pretty much everything you said and have, on occasions, voiced something similar
[Reply]
Ami Mattison Reply:
March 21st, 2011 at 8:19 am
WildC, I’m glad you brought up the ways we may unconsciously sabotage ourselves. I too have struggled with illness just at the moment in which a creative obligation was impending. On more than one occasion, I’ve had to cancel a spoken word performance due to a sudden and mysterious illness, which I knew deep down was about the extreme anxiety I was experiencing. I know from experience that it requires quite a bit of determination to push through illness and fulfill one’s obligations or desires.
As for my own problem, I found that once I started actually attending to my anxiety and started expecting the problem early, I began to more easily succeed in what I wanted to do. In my case, the solution required taking meds for my anxiety and learning methods to both prevent and address the anxiety head-on.
Thank you so very much for sharing your experience. And good luck with your creative pursuits!
[Reply]